One of the creature’s mantis legs lashed at me.

I blocked with my right-hand hatchet and chopped with my left, summoning that weapon mid-swing.

The impact of the first blow jammed my right arm but my other hatchet slashed through the creature’s front spider-leg--and the mantis leg that I’d blocked spurted forward, growing four feet in the blink of an eye, extending into a sharp point that thrust toward my face like an arrow fired from a bow.

I turned to smoke and Chirotry stabbed where I’d been, lunging forward, unable to compensate for my sudden absence, as unbalanced as an eight-legged creature could be. Well, or maybe a nine-or-ten-legged creature: it didn’t seem to limit itself to normal biology or symmetry.

Then I resolidified at its side, chopping viciously at its back.

My hatchets cleaved into Chirotry’s body.

An unearthly squeal sounded and three blunt slug-like forms erupted from its skin and slammed into me. Well, two of them were blunt but the third sharpened into a spear that caught me in the stomach.

I chopped one of the blunt snakes in half before the pain and shock almost brought me to my knees. The severed end of the ‘slug’ hit the ground with a wet smack and the spear-slug sprouted barbs along its length--and inside me. Like a fish-hook inside a fish’s mouth.

Chirotry dragged me toward itself by my wound and agony blossomed in my stomach. The world turned red, blood red then white-hot and an instant before I fainted I managed to turn to smoke again.

My pain faded and I checked my status.

Health: 35/53

Not bad considering I’d been stabbed in the stomach and dragged around by the wound. I smokily braced myself, then returned to my body, screaming a wordless battlecry as I hacked at the creature. I carved a furrow along its flank and severed another mantis leg before a razor-wire tentacle wrapped my calf, carving through my flesh to the bone.

I chopped that tentacle in half but missed the claw-mouth that tore a chunk of meat from my hip and I screamed again, that time in mindless pain.

Still, I managed to parry four more snake-eruptions before a fifth shot past my guard and slammed me in the thigh. Hard enough to crack concrete, but with my increased Fortitude my bones didn’t break. Hurt like a son of a bitch, though, and that leg wouldn’t take my weight any longer. I managed to chop off two more spidery mouth-limbs before Chirotry sprang at me on coiled legs that I hadn’t even seen forming, and slammed me with a snout like a battering ram.

Something cracked in my chest.

Health: 14/53

Shit. Still, at least I’d managed to get one of my hatchet-spikes between us. The metal stabbed deep into Chirotry’s face, piercing its head beside two of its eyes. Giving another pained squeal, Chirotry reeled back, bleeding and blinded, so I--well, I figured I’d press my advantage.

I didn’t want to use my last point in Fortitude, but that was what it was for. I’d heal up and kill this fucker once and for all.

So I limped forward, applied the point and--

Unable to raise Fortitude above 15 at current tier.

I applied the point harder, with a frantic desperation.

Unable to raise Fortitude above 15 at current tier.

What the fuck? What the absolute fuck? Now you tell me? Now?

I wanted to scream. I wanted to sob. But I didn’t have time for either as a snarl of razor-wire tentacles lashed at me.

I carved through most of them in a wild panic. My armor and skin handled the rest. Almost. My trousers tore and bloody stripes appeared and Chirotry’s snout turned into a battering ram again.

Health: 11/53

I backpedaled and the big fucker launched at me.

I turned into smoke again and that time I dropped my vapor low between the graves, wafting along the floor, trying to escape. Stone cracked as Chirotry struck a tomb behind me and I billowed along, as fast as possible, watching my mana deplete.

I got maybe ten feet before I needed to resolidify. When I returned to my body, all my pain returned too, so abruptly that I almost wept. I stayed low and silent, though, limping and panting through the tombs. Aiming for the exit, for the Hole.

I was out of Mana.

I was almost out of Health.

My emergency Fortitude cheat had lulled me into a deathtrap.

I needed to retreat, to regroup. I didn’t know how to beat this thing, and without a backup heal ... well, I couldn’t.

I moved as silently as possible given my injuries, and completely lost sight of Chirotry. Of course. It could turn into a monstrous snake and slither on the ground, out of sight. Hell, it could shrink into a transparent mantis the size of a chihuahua and leap from tomb to tomb.

I wouldn’t survive a surprise attack, so I paused for a moment, watching and listening and scanning with Intuit ... and a notification flickered a few rows away.

INTUIT: Chirotry the Shaper, Level 9

“Gotcha,” I mouthed.

That was the good news. I wasn’t going to get ambushed. But as I watched, the spidery blob beneath the Intuit tag dashed across the tombyard ... then shifted. Chirotry changed shape and color, and turned into a gravestone. Just one more big black slab among the rest. Hunkering down to wait for me to pass nearby ... in the worst possible place.

“It’s between you and the exit,” Princess told me.

“I noticed.”

“You ... you’re bleeding.”

“I noticed that, too.”

“You get a teensy bit grumpy when you almost die while fighting for your life in the occult tombyard of a long-vanished cult.”

A wisp of a smile tugged at my lips despite the pain in my leg and hip and chest. “Yeah, I’m funny that way.”

Neither of us spoke for a minute. Me, because I was concentrating on breathing without coughing up a lung. There was something broken inside me. I didn’t know why Princess had fallen silent, though: probably sipping tea while a string quartet played in the background.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Okay,” I whispered. “Here goes.”

“My prayers climb with you,” she said, without asking what I meant.

I didn’t explain. My plan was simple. I’d draw Chirotry away from the Hole by tossing something to clatter on the floor across the tombyard. Just like I had with the thornspiders eating the cocooned wolves. Then I’d run--or lumber painfully--through the exit.

Then I’d collapse for a week in the courtyard. Good plan, right?

I slowly, stealthily, painfully, peered at the floor around me, looking for pebbles to throw. I didn’t see any, though. All I saw was writing on a gravestone: “--e breath, sleeping finally in ashes. Gifted with the gust of smoke, Franti rido’Frangar. May he billow towa--“

Above the writing, I saw the remains of a skeleton. So I slowly, stealthily, painfully grabbed a couple of bones from the top of that stone.

“Sorry, Franti,” I whispered.

I weighed charred fingerbones in my palm. I leaned back to throw them, to fling them all the way across the cavern ... and that’s when my injured leg buckled.

Instead of throwing the bones forward, I fell backward on my ass with a massive clatter.

“It’s coming,” Princess told me.

Shit. Shit! I started crawling away between the stones.

“Turn ... turn left,” she said. “I think.”

I crawled into the aisle to my left and barely breathed, “You think?”

“I can’t tell! Please don’t die. Oh, no--faster, forward, then right!”

I did what she told me, and heard the pitter-patter of a hundred millipede feet behind me. I crawled faster, faster--then I coughed. I couldn’t help myself.

“Stop, stop right there!” Princess urged.

I caught my breath and froze behind a narrow gravestone.

Chirotry stalked the aisle on the other side, now in format that looked like spidery Death, a tall shrouded arachnid with two sickle-arms.

I didn’t move. I didn’t cough. I barely breathed.

Chirotry prowled past.

I crawled forward again, then turned twice. I’d lost track of the Hole, but at least I was getting farther from the monster.

“It found your tracks,” Princess said. “Drops of blood. It’s tracking you.”

“Well,” I said, though gritted teeth. “Gosh darnit.”

“You can swear now,” she said.

“In that case,” I said, crawling around another corner. “I swear this: if I die, I’m taking that fucker with me.”

Ahead of me, I spotted the compact-car tomb with the alcove again. Protecting my back and sides still sounded like a good idea. It sounded better than every to tell the true. So I crawled forward until I reached the alcove. At first I thought I saw words carved in the back wall, but it was just holes that led into some interior space. Well, more like stone grillwork or something.

The holes were far small for me to enter. The largest looked a little bigger than the size of my fist. And hell, even if I could shrink to fist-sized, so could Chirotry. Which didn’t really--

“It’s back,” Princess told me, in a low horrified voice. “It’s just outside. The creature. Huge. Fleshy. Horrible. It--it’s not leaving.”

I tried to think. She was stuck in a big space, which had to mean one of the largest tombs. The one I’d checked didn’t have a window, though, and she said she could see outside. So that meant she was trapped inside one of the other two big tombs.

“Can it get to you?” I asked.

“My gracious gods!” she said, with a sudden gasp that I didn’t understand.

“What?”

“Oh. Oh, um. Well.”

I took a feeble, dragging step toward the closer of the big tombs, hoping that’s where she was trapped. “I’m coming. I’m coming.”

“No, go back! Go back where you were! Hide in that, that little niche!”

I retreated into the alcove. “What’s going on?”

“Well, goodness. Silly me. You--you’re going to laugh when I tell you?” She sounded extremely unsure of that. “We’re going to laugh and laugh! Er, some of the priests who summoned me were human! I forgot that. And you’re human too!”

“You thought I was infenti? What does that matter? There’s a shapechanging monster out here that want to eat my my goddamn face.“

“Look inside, Alexershees. Inside the tomb behind you.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now!” she said, almost sharp for once.

So I glanced through the largest hole in the stone grillwork. A little orange light seeped in to the tomb from the cavern, despite me standing in the way. There was enough, at least, for me to see the empty space within: the polished walls, the wrist-thick columns ...

And the thumb-sized gem in the center, shimmering with rainbow colors. A gorgeous iridescent jewel, more beautiful than a diamond or ruby. More like one of those beetles you see pictures of that are so breathtaking they look almost unearthly, with shining wings and elaborate antennae and ornate, jointed legs that ...

Legs!

The thumb-sized gem had legs.

Because the gem was a spider.

Another fucking spider.

Plus, it was looking directly at me and then--I swear on my grandmother’s soul--raising a foreleg in a wave. What the fuck? I took a breath to brace against an attack and--

INTUIT: Anomaly, Level 1 (33)

“Hello!” Princess said, as another foreleg waved. “Welcome! Greetings, Alexington! Ooh, I can move now! Um, I do apologize, I didn’t mean to mislead or--“

“What the hell?” I snapped.

“It’s good to finally meet you properly, face to face. Or, or I could say, eye to eye to eye to eye to eye to--”

“You’re ... “ I blinked at the spider. “That’s you?”

“And that’s you,” she said.

“Wait. I’m the ‘huge, fleshy monster’ you kept seeing”

“Sorry! I do apologize , but you must admit that you’re rather ... well, I didn’t know you were human!”

“What’d you think I was?”

“Normal!” she said. “And anyway, you think I’m ugly, too.”

“I think you’re a gemstone,” I told her.

“Oh, goodness. That’s very gallant. Well ... how come you’re so tall? You tower over this grand hall like a, well, a tower!”

“I’m normal height. You’re palm-sized. This entire grand hall is the size of a horse.”

“I’ve shrunk that much? I used to loom over humans. I suppose that over the years, the decades--perhaps the centuries or millennia?--of my slumber I’ve lost more of my ...“ She paused. “Give me your hand. I can’t seem to take a step forward.”

“What?”

“Chirotry’s coming! It’s coming back, it found you!”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw a monstrous pillbug-looking version of Chirotry shuffling toward me. A fringe of antennae swept the ground in front of it, twitching wildly every time one touched a drop of my blood.

“Your hand!” Princess repeated.

“I need to run.”

“You need to reach through that hole and touch me, Alex. Now, quickly! I’ll heal you.”

Health: 11/53

Chirotry paused between two gravestones, scanning the tombyard. As its malformed head swiveled toward me, I spotted hatchet wounds cross-crossing its body. I’d injured it, and fairly badly. So maybe it would flee to the ceiling to heal when it spotted me. Maybe it would give me a chance to flee to the courtyard, to do the same. Maybe it would decide it didn’t want another taste of my hatchets.

That was definitely the best path for it. That was the best path both of us. C’mon, Chirotry, be a pal. Go away, hide and heal. You’re in rough shape. Don’t risk your life on some boring little human.

I stayed motionless in the alcove, only half-visible in the gloom, and silently urged it to leave.

Instead, its freakish gaze snagged on me. Three carapace-whips unspooled from its chest and it rose into a long-limbed format for speed--to hunt me, to catch me--and stalked closer on a dozen gazelle-like legs.

I was too far from the Hole to escape. I was too hurt to fight, too weak to win. I didn’t have a chance.

I didn’t have a choice.

As a general rule of life, you didn’t shove your arm into a hole containing a brightly-colored sentient spider, now matter how charming she was. That was obvious. I mean, I liked Princess. Maybe I was lonely after so long with no interaction except for a few days with Oksar, but still. I liked her. She amused me. She broke the monotony and she enjoyed laughing. It didn’t get much better than that.

Still, ‘don’t put your hand into a spider hole’ was a basic rule of life. Like ‘don’t lick an electrical socket’ and ‘don’t stick your dick in crazy.’

Usually.

But when a shape-shifting Level 9 monster was bearing down on you and you were at twenty percent of your maximum health? That was when the rules changed. So I blipped my left-hand hatchet into my domain and shoved that arm in the hole to the elbow.

“Closer!” Princess said. “Show me your wrist. Move your wrist closer, Alex!”

I pushed in to my shoulder, then felt her spidery hair on my skin.

“This is going to sting a teensy bit,” she said, and sunk her fangs into the inside of my wrist.

It didn’t ‘sting.’ It goddamn electrified me. Pain coursed up my arm into my chest, a searing sensation like I’d reached into a vat of acid.

I tried to yank my hand away, but I couldn’t move.

I was paralyzed.

“That’s just my venom,” Princess said, somehow speaking despite being fang-deep in my flesh. “Filling your veins.”

Oh, is that fucking all? I didn’t say, because I couldn’t. Excruciating agony spread into my neck, then my head. My eyes burned, my tongue swelled. Pain lashed across my shoulders and into my other arm, into my belly and stomach, my balls and legs.

Yeah, it hurt.

I tried again to pull away, and failed again.

“Just one more second, Alexynthia!” Princess chirpily announced. “Won’t be long now! Two shakes of a termite’s tail!”

The pain was so horrible that I actually shifted my gaze from my impending death--by which I meant the monstrous spider-gazelle galloping closer, three whips raised to strike--and scowled into the tomb instead. To silently plead for mercy. Or at least to watch as a tiny, jewel-like spider poisoned me, her mouth clamped on the inside of my wrist.

“Done!” she said, speaking into my mind. “Much better now. Well, except for one itsy-bitsy detail. To wit, if I release you immediately, I’ll shrivel up like a raisin or prune, or at least a husk of my former self, so I hope you won’t mind if I keep my fangs embedded in you for--“

“Let me go!” I snapped, finally able to speak again as Chirotry swarmed closer. “Let me go, goddamit, it’s coming!”

A notification popped into existence.

SUCCESS: Find an ally! Look at you, making friends with the other children. Also, accepting the venom of the royal family of Arachryst into your veins.

REWARD: Permanent plus one to Speed.

REWARD: Permanent plus two to Alertness.

“Of-of course,” Princess said, her voice a reedy whisper. “I’d never maintain contact without permission. However, I should warn you. This is going to hurt.”

I braced myself for another wave of agony--but she screamed instead, the instant that she released her fangs. And as she screamed, a golden, healing magic flowed into me from my spider-bitten wrist.

Health: 53/53